New Google Photos app offers unlimited storage for infinite photos

Today during Google’s IO keynote, it unveiled the long-rumored standalone photos service, Google Photos. The biggest perk of the new standalone app isn’t all of the cool new features Google unveiled for Photos, but rather the fact that the service will offer unlimited cloud storage of all your photos and videos. That’s a huge departure from services like Apple’s iCloud, which only offers 5GB of space for free.

So what’s the catch with the free unlimited space? Any pictures that are over 16MP will be compressed. You’ll also be able to store 1080p videos for free, but any 4K recording you take with your phone will be downsized on the service as well.

If you’re a photographer who doesn’t want to opt into the free option with compression, when you install the app you’ll be able to choose the “original” Google Photos option. This will store all of your photos and videos that you select at the original resolution, but you’ll need premium Google Drive space. For a month, you can get 1TB of space for all your uncompressed photo and video needs.

For everyone else, backing up and finding your photos just became a whole lot easier.

UPDATE: It’s live!